After Ice Cream Sandwich Comes… Jelly Bean

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In case you’ve lain awake nights wondering what tasty treat will follow Ice Cream Sandwich in Google’s sweet parade of Android versions, allow me to set your mind at ease. According to a “trusted source” speaking to This is my next, it’s going to be Jelly Bean.

More importantly, this source says that some of the “game-changing stuff” that was going to hit with ICS is being pushed out to Jelly Bean. That isn’t exactly welcome news — not that we actually knew exactly what was coming. On the other hand, they have to ship sometime, and Schmidt has just confirmed that October-November is the window they’re aiming for.

Excising a few of the peskier features is probably how they managed to nail the date down so semi-exactly, but I’m guessing the major functionality discussed (merging the tablet and mobile branches of the Android family tree) will be mostly intact.

Depending on what they’re shipping with, this push to release could be either good timing or extremely poor timing. If it’s a compelling release, they might see a nice bump in sales for the holidays. On the other hand, everyone seems pretty sure that the iPad 3 is on its way come January or February. If the cool features from ICS are delayed past that, the opportunity will have come and gone.

We’ll know more when Google releases more information about ICS next month. Perhaps they’ll even answer questions straight out about what wasn’t included. If we get a chance, we’ll ask.